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Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words so you don’t have to. Check out our latest selections.

cooler

Jess: “Nick, I’m gonna admit it. I might be your cooler. . . .But to be fair, you are your own cooler 70% of the time.”

“Cooler,” New Girl, January 29, 2013

A cooler here is someone who ruins another’s luck in romance, perhaps playing off another meaning of cooler: in gambling, someone who is supposedly bad luck and makes other players lose. The Cooler was a 2003 film with William H. Macy in the titular role.

NOLA Roast Beef Po-Boy with debris and au jus.

debris

Anthony Bourdain: “Now we’ve been talking about debris and po’boys. I do not see the word po’boy or debris on this menu.”

“New Orleans,” The Layover, January 28, 2013

Debris here refers to beef shredded into tiny pieces, resembling the original meaning of debris, “the scattered remains of something broken or destroyed; rubble or wreckage.” (A debris-cone, in case you were wondering, is “a mound or cone built up by the accumulation of erupted, fragmental products about the vent of a volcano.”)

The po’boy is a kind of sandwich native to the U.S. Gulf Coast. A shortening of poor boy, the phrase either comes from the French pourboire, drink money, or was coined by New Orleans restaurant workers in 1929 who called the railroad strikers they gave free sandwiches to “poor boys.”

despertainment

Stephen Colbert: “This pioneering form of despertainment is sure to be such a hit that other networks are gonna have their own spin-offs, like Meal or No Meal, Americans, Idle, and Are You More Employable Than a 5th Grader?”

The Colbert Report, February 5, 2013

Despertainment, a blend of desperate and entertainment, refers here to the reality show, The Job, in which unemployed contestants compete for the chance to win “a dream job at their dream company.”

dwell time

Anthony Bourdain: “Dwell time, that’s the period after you get through security [at the airport] and before you board.”

“Seattle,” The Layover, February 4, 2013

Dwell time is chiefly an engineering term that means “the period of time that a system or element of a system remains in a given state,” and seems to refer the amount of time a plane or train remains in station after arrival and before departure. The phrase also has the military sense of “the amount of time that service members spend in their home nation between deployments to war zones.”

The earliest citation we could find for dwell time meaning the amount of time a person waits at the airport after security and before boarding is from May 21, 2001: “From its airy and vaulted departure hall. . .to its four-block-long retail area that looks like any suburban mall. . .Terminal 4 seems intent on changing the airport phenomenon euphemistically called ‘dwell time’ into something more pleasant.”

fart patio

Waitress at vegan restaurant [to couple]: “We’ve been getting a lot of complaints. If you do need to flatulate, we have a designated area.”
[Cut to sign, FART PATIO, THIS WAY.]
Woman: “Ah! Now I’m all loosey-goosey!”

Episode 4, Season 3, Portlandia, January 18, 2013

A fart patio is, well, a patio where one goes to fart, and may be likened to a designated smoking area.

A common misconception is that a vomitorium was a designated area for ancient Greeks to vomit after feasting when it was actually “a passage located behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre used as an exit for the crowds.” Vomit comes from the Latin vomere, “spew forth, discharge.”

Appraiser: “Now, Martin Bach Sr. did not blow glass. He was a chemist. So he knew all the secret formulas and all of the different colors and chemicals used to create something that looked like this. But he didn’t have a gaffer.”

“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, January 28, 2013

A gaffer is a glass blower in general, a master glass blower, or the head glassmaker. The word may be a contraction of grandfather, and also refers to an old man or the boss or foreman of a work crew, which may have given rise to gaffer meaning “an electrician in charge of lighting on a movie or television set.”

hogcock

Liz: “I just thought I’d check in on you because you’re the emotionally fragile one.”
Jack: “Hogcock, which is a combination of hogwash and poppycock.”

“Hogcock!/Last Lunch,” 30 Rock, January 31, 2013

Hogwash, slang for nonsense, first referred to “the refuse of a kitchen or brewery, etc., given to swine as food.” Poppycock, also slang for nonsense, probably comes from the Dutch pappekak, “soft dung,” where the last element, kak, comes from the Latin cacere, “to excrete” (which also gives us caca).

Appraiser: “It’s a war club. . . .[f]rom the Maori.. . .called a kotiate. And a kotiate means ‘split liver’. . . . I think it probably comes from the shape of the item. It almost looks like the two lobes of the liver.”

“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, January 28, 2013

The kotiate is a traditional hand weapon of the Maori of New Zealand. Other Maori weapons include the mere, the patu, and the taiaha.

lion rampant

Appraiser: “On the left we have ‘Arms of the lion rampant’ by the name ‘Phillips.’ And on the right side we have ‘Arms of the lion rampant’ by the name ‘Jackson.’”

“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, February 4, 2013

Rawr

A lionrampant refers to, in heraldry, a lion “rearing on the left hind leg with the forelegs elevated, the right above the left, and usually with the head in profile.” A counter-rampant is “rampant in opposite directions: said of animals used as bearings.”

Plantagenet

Stephen Colbert: “He’s also an important historical figure because he was the last king of the Plantagenet line. For those not familiar, Plantagenet means he was descended from a plant.”

Welcome to Word Soup Wednesday, in which we bring you our favorite strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from sitcoms, dramas, news shows, and just about anything else on TV.

baldy house

Anthony Bourdain: “I gotta know: why do they call it a baldy house?”
Guide: “It was believed, sort of incorrectly, that if you shave a woman’s crotch bald, she’d be less likely to transmit crabs.”

“Philadelphia,” The Layover, December 3, 2012

A baldy house is a brothel and may be a play on bawdyhouse. Brothel comes from an Old English word meaning “to decay,” and at first referred to “a wretch” or “lewd man or woman.” Bawdy may come from a Welsh word meaning “mud.”

Belsnickel

Dwight: “What about an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas? Drink some gluhwein, enjoy some hossenfeffer. Enjoy Christmas with St. Nicholas’s rural German companion, Belsnickel?”

“Dwight Christmas,” The Office, December 6, 2012

Belsnickel is “a crotchety, fur-clad Christmas gift-bringer figure in the folklore of the Palatinate region of southwestern Germany,” and is “preserved in Pennsylvania Dutch communities.” The name comes from the German pelz, “to pelt,” and the name Nikolaus. See also Krampus.

filibuster

Shep Smith: “You know that one friend who just won’t let you get a word in edgewise? Well, the U.S. Senate has a friend like that. His name is filibuster.”
Jon Stewart: “And you know that one friend who comes to where you live and rearranges your stuff? Gerrymander.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, December 3, 2012

Filibuster is “the use of obstructionist tactics, especially prolonged speechmaking, for the purpose of delaying legislative action.” The word originally referred to “an adventurer who engages in a private military action in a foreign country,” specifically “the West Indian bucaneers or pirates of the seventeenth century.” Filibuster ultimately comes from the Dutch vrijbuiter, “pirate.”

flaneur

Woman: “The word ‘flaneur’ in French is just to kind of wander. Here it’s okay to just be a flaneur and to dream and to walk along and then stop in a cafe.”

“Paris,” The Layover, November 26, 2012

A flaneur is “an idle, gossiping saunterer; one who habitually strolls about idly.” The word is French in origin.

geophagy

Sabrina: “It’s called geophagy. I sense you have questions. Go ahead.”
Burt: “Do you wash your hands before you eat dirt? If it falls on the ground, is there a five second rule? Have you ever tried sand?”

“Squeak Means Squeak,” Raising Hope, December 4, 2012

Geophagy is “the eating of earthy substances, such as clay or chalk, practiced among various peoples as a custom or for dietary or subsistence reasons,” and is a combination of the Greek words for “earth” and “eat.”

Pica is “an abnormal craving or appetite for nonfood substances, such as dirt, paint, or clay,” and comes from the Latin word for magpie, “from its omnivorous nature.”

granny pod

Newscaster: “We’re checking out a business that makes granny pods. . . . They’re long term care housing options for the elderly. They’re portable. They can be set up right on your property, in your backyard if you want.”

The Colbert Report, December 3, 2012

Pod meaning “a casing or housing forming part of a vehicle” originated around 1950, says the Oxford English Dictionary. The earliest meaning was “in botany, a more or less elongated cylindrical or flatfish seed-vessel, as of the pea, bean, catalpa.”

guillotine

Anthony Bourdain: “Maurice and I catch up with a cold rosé and a snack called a guillotine, thin slices of bread with equally thin slices of meat and cheese. Simple and good.”

“Paris,” The Layover, November 26, 2012

The guillotine, “a device consisting of a heavy blade held aloft between upright guides and dropped to behead the victim below,” or “an instrument, such as a paper cutter, similar in action to a guillotine.”

The device was named for Joseph Guillotin, who “proposed, for humanitarian and efficiency reasons, that capital punishment be carried out by beheading quickly and cleanly on a machine.”

Perhaps the snack is named for the device that slices the meat, cheese, and bread.

The maw of hog maw comes from the Old English maga, “stomach.” Hackin is “a pudding made in the maw of a sheep or hog,” and seems similar to haggis.

housewife

Jon Stewart: “[Congresswoman Candice Miller] will be the chair of the House Administration Committee, whose responsibilities apparently range from ‘making Congress more open and accessible’ to ‘ensuring the House runs efficiently and smoothly.’ So we’ve got a woman to be, to coin a phrase, the House wife.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, December 4, 2012

A housewife is “a woman who manages her own household as her main occupation.” The word hussy, “a woman considered brazen or immoral,” is an alteration of housewife, and originally had the same meaning, “the mistress of the house.”

hyperemesis gravidarum

Jon Stewart: “While morning sickness may be all right for commoners, the royals puke fancy.”
Newcaster: “[Kate Middleton is] suffering from what is called hyperemesis gravidarum.”
Jon Stewart: “Isn’t that the spell they used to defeat Voldemort?”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, December 6, 2012

Hyperemesis is “excessive vomiting” while gravidarum means “during pregnancy.” Gravid is a clinical term for being pregnant, and comes from the Latin gravis, “heavy.”

merkin

Guide: “They actually didn’t want the women to be shaven bald. That meant you were either underage or a prostitute. So they would make them wear crotch wigs.”
Anthony: “Crotch wigs known as a merkin. Why I know this, I don’t know.”

“Philadelphia,” The Layover, December 3, 2012

Merkin is probably an alteration of malkin, “a kitchen servant, or any common woman; a slattern,” or “a mop.”

rexie

Jake [regarding Marley]: “She hasn’t been eating. She’s been skipping lunch.”
Santana [to Kitty]: “Because you’ve been telling her to? You’ve been trying to turn her into a damned rexie?”

“Swan Song,” Glee, December 6, 2012

Rexie refers to someone who views having anorexia nervosa as attractive and admirable. A synonym is pro-ana, or pro-anorexia. Rexie may be a blend of anorexia and sexy.

vagenius

Sadie: “Schmidt, in my professional opinion, you have definitely earned the rank of, and I will use a phrase you coined, vagenius.”

“Eggs,” New Girl, November 27, 2012

Vagenius is a blend of vagina and genius, and refers to someone adept pleasuring a woman.

And on that note, that’s it for this week! If you notice any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup.

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